Editing Shoah (film) (section)

===Franz Suchomel===
Corporal [[Franz Suchomel]], interviewed by Lanzmann in Germany on 27 April 1976, was an SS officer who had worked at Treblinka.<ref>[https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=5673 "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection, Interview with Franz Suchomel"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.</ref> Suchomel agreed to be interviewed for 500 [[Deutschmark]]s, but refused to be filmed, so Lanzmann used hidden recording equipment while assuring Suchomel that he would not use his name.<ref>Marcel Ophüls, "Closely Watched Trains", in Liebman (ed.) 2007, 84.</ref>

Suchomel talks in detail about the camp's [[gas chamber]]s and the disposal of bodies. He states that he did not know about the extermination at Treblinka until he arrived there. On his first day, he says he vomited and cried after encountering trenches full of corpses, 6–7 m deep, with the earth around them moving in waves because of the gases seeping from the decomposing bodies. The smell of the bodies carried for kilometres depending on the wind, he said, but local people were scared to act in case they were sent to the work camp, [[Treblinka I]].<ref name=transcript>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5046/7D940B1C-E4B1-4307-AB90-D5D915A8BE5E.pdf "Transcript of the ''Shoah'' interview with Franz Suchomel"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</ref>{{rp|p.7–8}}

He explained that from arrival at Treblinka to death in the gas chambers took 2–3 hours for a trainload of people. They would undress, the women would have their hair cut, then they would wait naked outside, including during the winter in minus 10–20&nbsp;°C, until there was room in the gas chamber. Suchomel told Lanzmann that he would ask the hairdressers to slow down so that the women would not have to wait so long outside.<ref name=transcript/>{{rp|p.19–20}}

Compared to the size and complexity of [[Auschwitz]], Suchomel calls Treblinka "primitive. But a well-functioning assembly line of death."<ref name=transcript/>{{rp|p.16}}